Introduction: Raj Alphonse is a Fredrickson Communications’ affiliate specializing in learning technology consulting. This blog entry is a lead-in to the April 14, 2011 meeting of the Fredrickson Roundtable for Learning Leaders where the featured discussion topic will be “The LMS Wishlist.”

Have you run into a brick wall lately? I felt like I did when I saw an article in the March issue of the CLO magazine titled, “Assessing Learning in a Post-LMS World.”

Did I read that right? Post-LMS? Is the LMS dead? The world stopped for a moment, then I felt dizzy. In disbelief I asked Google, “Is the LMS dead?” and got 16,900 results, including an article titled “Is the LMS Dead?” from CLO magazine dated September 26, 2010.

In six months CLO Magazine has gone from pondering if the LMS was dead to a dissertation on a post-LMS world. The authors assure us that a “post-LMS world … merely means that assessing learning only utilizing an LMS is becoming obsolete.” Sad, but true, there is ample evidence to support this notion. Just spell L-M-S out loudly to a gathering of training professionals and watch the reaction. No matter what LMS they use, everyone will have at least one gripe, one horror story, one wish. Summarize the feedback, and you can see the writing on the wall: the LMS badly needs to evolve.

Can this lumbering beast get its groove back? What can we do to make the feedback heard by those who can do something? Create a blog of gripes, a book of horror stories? That would be too negative.

Instead, how about we compile an LMS Wishlist and send it to the Beast Makers? A list that spells out what you want. And what you don’t want. A list that puts the spotlight on the gaps, goof-ups, and glaring omissions. A list that points to features no one asked for. A list to transform the “monolith” mindset of LMS designers into a “modular” mindset. A list to upgrade the evolutionary effort to a revolutionary one.

There is another benefit to drawing up a collective LMS wishlist: we can learn what everyone else wants, needs, likes, and dislikes. This is the beginning of a conversation about the future of the LMS because it shows us where learning professionals want to go and what they want to leave behind.

So please make a wish and make it known. This blog entry is just for that.

All wishes are welcome; no wish is too small, too large, nor too far-fetched. There are no limits to how many wishes you can have. Wishes may be related to operation, budget, technology, infrastructure, user interface, reporting, and whatever else you have.

And hurry please, before CLO Magazine starts thinking about an LMS autopsy report.